It hadn’t been a great week for Rishi Dhir — or for a number of people — when the Elephant Stone leader got on the phone from Oregon to talk about the group’s new disc, Ship of Fools.

Barely a week after the U.S. election results had shocked so many, and only a few days after the death of Leonard Cohen had been revealed, a sense of melancholy hung over the conversation.

On the night of the election, the Montreal band — which also includes drummer Miles Dupire and guitarist Gabriel Lambert — was playing in Vancouver after making a few tour stops along the U.S. West Coast, multi-instrumentalist Dhir said.

“I was happy to get back to Canada,” he said. “I didn’t want to be there for election night.”

But shortly before they took the stage, he said, the joy subsided as Donald Trump’s victory was pretty much ensured. “What do we do? I felt bad for everything, not knowing what was going to happen next,” Dhir said. “It wasn’t a celebratory show that night.”

They returned to the U.S. for a Seattle show after the election, and Dhir found the middle part of the band’s set list, which includes Silence Can Say So Much and A Silent Moment, presented a special opportunity. During that portion of the show, which, he said, carries a “spiritual vibe,” Dhir performs a raga on the sitar.

“With the sitar, you’re trying to convey emotions,” he said. “Maybe I was overthinking, but that night, I wanted to convey my love for everyone there, but also my sadness.”

Politics was hard to escape. Dhir, like many musicians, was happy to accept Facebook friend requests early in the game from people who knew him only through his music. Like a lot of artists, however, he found some pretty hateful and hostile comments — at serious odds with his own values — turning up in conversation threads on his page during the election campaign and its aftermath. Unfriending people was, at times, the only solution.

How people with that much anger and intolerance can gravitate toward Elephant Stone’s music in the first place seems hard to reconcile, Dhir acknowledged. “Maybe the message is lost on them,” he said.

The lyrical message of Ship of Fools, which often alternates between resigned sadness and defiant resistance, is an ideal soundtrack for Trump-related anxiety. Although written before the election and in response to different situations, geopolitical and otherwise, the songs have now found a new context.

Gabriel Lambert, left, Rishi Dhir and Miles Dupire offer an ideal soundtrack for Trump-related anxiety on Ship of Fools.Bowen Stead

Dhir said speaking out is part of his role. “My songs have a message. I have a point of view,” he said. “Music is the ultimate form of propaganda — for me, at least.”

Rock ’n’ roll, however, has failed to live up to its heritage of lyrical activism, Dhir suggested.

“Hip hop will lead the revolution in terms of society,” he said, raving about A Tribe Called Quest’s new disc We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service. “Hip hop these days is very opinionated, very political, very intelligent, very literate — whereas a lot of rock ’n’ roll now is not saying anything. A lot of bands say, ‘I don’t want to voice my political opinion.’ Then what’s the point of creating art if you’re not going to express yourself?”

“Is this what they’re calling courage? / Hidden and right out of view / Perched up high just like a savage / I don’t know what you will do,” Dhir sings in The Devil’s Shelter, a song that could have been played by a cheeky programmer after Trump’s victory speech. The track pulsates with an ominous synthesizer throb reminiscent of the Donna Summer classic I Feel Love.

Indeed, while Ship of Fools is in no way lacking in melody, it largely eschews the cheery ’60s jangle of Elephant Stone’s early recordings and continues the darker and denser progression of the group’s recent work — this time with a heavier dose of synthesizer. The tuneful rocker See the Light, for example, has an underlying synth pattern that evokes the Who’s Baba O’Riley. The grim Au Gallis, which closes the album, is distinctive not only for its French verses, but for its vocoder-drenched singing, reminiscent of Neil Young’s wildly experimental album Trans.

Dhir credited co-producer Marcus Paquin, who has worked with Arcade Fire and the National, with a sound that is edgier and more expansive than the group’s 2014 release The Three Poisons.

Ship of Fools’ familiar title has been used for several rock songs, novels, stories and a film, but it goes back to Plato. Dhir, however, based his decision to use it on a painting with the same name by his friend Daniel Barkley.

“I got the allegory of how we’re all on this boat, but no one’s guiding the ship. (It came) when Harper was in control. Then Trudeau came and I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ And then when I expected Clinton to win, I thought the idea wouldn’t apply anymore — although, mind you, the world’s still crazy. But then Trump won — and the album still applies.”

The album’s wary world view reflects the changes that come with age, said Dhir, who turns 40 next year.

“As I get older, I’ve become a bit more cynical and jaded, but also I feel a lot more confident in myself and my abilities and my voice and my message,” he said. “I think people expect that from Elephant Stone. I’m not going to write this album of weird psychedelic mumbo-jumbo about The Wizard. I’m not going to talk about the Misty Mountain Hop. It’s going to be very relevant. It’s going to be real. It’s going to be clear. I don’t write lyrics in colours.”

“I say what I mean and I am who I am,” he added. “It feels like the world is insane right now. It’s out of control. And all I can do is write songs.”

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